COVENTRY’S team re-declaration saga was dragging on last night with the club’s management locked in talks with the sport’s officials.

The Buildbase Bees were urgently seeking clarification of the exact worth of the rulebook after a Speedway Control Bureau verdict deducted Scott Nicholls’s points from last week’s win over Ipswich.

The Grand Prix man’s 10-point contribution was removed, meaning the Bees beat the Witches 45-36 rather than 55-36.

That made no material difference to the outcome of the meeting as the Bees still won by a wide enough margin to take all three Elite League points on offer – but it did not address the fundamental issue of debate over the last 10 days.

That concerned how the sport’s management committee could reject a team which had been declared in accordance with the rulebook, with the SCB then making their ruling based on the MC being the sole judges of the legality of a team.

The SCB also stated that should Bees continue to operate with a team which did not conform to MC approval, they would lose all of the points from subsequent meetings in which that took place.

With three meetings in four days coming up this weekend, the situation – which had been allowed to drag for over a week, doing the sport little credit – needs to be resolved before the Bees declare a team for Friday’s home fixture against Belle Vue.

And a full-scale review of the rulebook and its’ apparent ‘unwritten’ regulations must be top of the agenda for this winter’s discussions.